Chapter Eleven
Neith
Van opens his mouth to answer me, but I interrupt. I need to tell Baz about my parents before it gets lost in the conversation, and I completely forget to mention it.
“You know we told you that Pete is my dad?” I ask.
Baz’s eyebrows dip down slightly since the conversation that we were just having had absolutely nothing to do with Pete.
He nods, “Yeah.”
“He’s also the King of Trieneliea, the realm that has been closed off so the war couldn’t slip through to the other realms,” I explain, since I have no idea if he remembers it, or if he’s even aware of it happening since he was on the run in Luesidious when it happened.
At least I think he was, I’m not entirely sure on the timelines, and I don’t think he is either.
I continue explaining, “Pete shouldn’t be in this realm.
My mom, the queen, is still over there. I don’t remember anything before I was five,” I tell him quickly.
I feel like, since the Pete situation is most likely the next one that we’re going to be dealing with, that Baz should probably know that.
“So you’re royalty, huh?” He smirks when I pull a face, and he adds with a smile, “Noted, don’t call you royalty.”
“Do you remember Trieneliea?” Raiden asks curiously.
Baz nods, “I do. I remember that there was a war going on, but I don’t remember the realm being shut down, and access to it being cut off from the other realms.”
“It probably overlapped from when you were caught in Luesidious,” Ransom points out. He adds, “And I don’t imagine that you managed to keep up on the goings on of the other realms.”
“No, I was a bit too focused on surviving,” Baz agrees.
I glance over at Van, “Sorry, I just wanted to make sure that Baz knew before I forgot to tell him, and then he got really shocked when we found Pete, and Baz maybe recognized him.”
Van smiles, “That’s fair enough. To answer your previous question though, yes, I have heard from Ty. They’ve found some strong leads for The Owner, and he’s confident that they’re going to catch up to him.”
“That’s good,” I reply. “I have no idea how I’m going to let Rana know when we’ve got him.”
River clears his throat, “Dare messaged me, Trip arrived. I filled them in on the situation, and they’re all going to go and look for her.”
My eyebrow raises, “They’re all going?”
River nods, “Yep.”
“They’ve hit it off that quickly?” Griff asks in surprise.
River smirks, “I think that it’s got more to do with the fact that it's Rana.”
“Ahh. Gotcha ya,” Griff grins. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
“I may have read the situation wrong, but I would be surprised if I have,” River replies with a smile.
“Well, I’m glad that she’s got people who care about her going after her,” I reply, a small amount of tension easing.
River nods, “He said that he would keep me updated.”
“Thank fuck,” I reply.
“Has Kar got in contact with you about Pete’s location?” Coen asks, curiously.
I shake my head, “No, he hasn’t.”
“I’m assuming that you found your phone then?” Reed asks me with a smirk.
I give him a look and fish my phone out of my pocket, waving it in the air triumphantly, “Yes, I did. Thank you very much.”
Granted, it took me longer than I thought it would.
“Where was it?” Griff asks with a smirk.
I mumble my reply.
Baz smirks, “What was that?”
I pull a face and then grin, “It was in my boot.”
The guys all burst out laughing.
I decide not to tell them that it wasn’t even a boot that I had worn recently, but rather one that was in my closet. I’m not entirely sure how it got there, but I have to assume that I dropped it while I was searching for something to wear at some point, and it just happened to fall into my boot.
In all honesty, I never would have found it if it weren’t for House’s help.
He must have gotten fed up with me bitching about the fact that I lost my phone because he flung the doors of the closet open and then rattled the floorboard that my boot was on until I got the message and went to have a look inside.
Trying to distract them, I say, “It’s been long enough that I’m going to call him and see if he can give us a proper update rather than sparse text messages.”
Van nods, “Good idea. Put it on speaker phone so that you don’t have to repeat yourself.”
I nod, already dialing, and press the right buttons on my phone so that everyone can hear Kar.
“What?” Kar answers the phone gruffly.
“Well, hello to you to,” I smirk.
“Somebody's grumpy today,” Coen adds, his smile wide.
“Fuck you,” Kar replies, although the tone of his voice has changed drastically now that he knows it's us. There’s a smile in his voice as he asks, “I’m assuming that you’re calling for an update on Pete?”
“Yes, and to check you’re remembering basic hygiene, and to eat,” I add.
He loudly crunches down the phone, “See, little sister, I’m eating right now.”
I laugh, “Alright, I believe you. So what’s going on with Pete?”
“Quite simply put, I can’t fucking find him,” he replies, sounding frustrated.
Coen’s eyebrows rise in surprise, “You can’t?”
“No,” Kar growls. Kar always growls, so it’s not really surprising that he’s growling now when he actually has a good reason to.
He then adds, “Well, technically I can, but I literally get his location for maybe half a second, and then he disappears again. I have no idea how he’s doing it, but I have to assume that he knows he’s being tracked. ”
“Fuck, that’s not good,” Van mutters.
“No, it’s not. I know how important it is that you guys find him.
I have been working on a new idea, which puts a bit more magic into locating him, along with the technology.
It’s going to take some time to get it up and running, but I’m almost certain that it will be able to lock in on his location and follow him if he moves,” Kar explains.
The guy's eyebrows all rise as they all look impressed.
“I didn’t know that it was possible to mix magic and tech like that?” Raiden asks.
“Technically, it’s not. There’s a very fine line that you have to walk to make sure that the magic doesn’t fight against the tech and that the tech doesn’t immediately stop working.
I put magic in all of my devices, but in order to pull this off, I need to put more in, which means I need to custom-build the system, which is why it will take a bit longer for me to do,” Kar explains.
“That’s seriously impressive,” Reed says.
“Thanks,” Kar replies, and I can hear him tapping away in the background. We’re about to lose him to his work again.
“How much longer do you need, man?” Coen asks.
“A week. Maybe less, I’ve already started, but just to be safe and in case something doesn’t go the way that I think it's going to, give me seven days from today,” Kar replies.
“You got it,” Van says. “Thanks, man.”
Kar grunts, and I chuckle as I hang up the phone.
“That was the most that we were going to get out of him. He already started tapping again. I’m surprised he gave us as much information as he did,” I explain when the guys look at me curiously.
“Fair enough,” Ransom replies. “I know exactly what that’s like. I get the same way when I’m working on something.”
“We know,” Griff grins.
“So what do we do now?” River asks. “We were told that we needed to get here quickly, and that we needed to find Pete quickly, but that’s obviously not going to happen as soon as we thought it was.”
“Something must have changed, or the two weren’t connected,” Doc points out thoughtfully.
“I hadn’t thought about it like that, actually,” I reply.
“It would make sense though. If we hadn’t turned up when we did, then House could have had more trouble trying to fight off the ghost army, and we definitely wouldn't have been in the right place for the wolf sales, and we may not have even gotten Baz from Luesidious. So yeah. I’d say that the rush to get here was for those reasons rather than for Pete. ”
Doc nods, “Yeah, I think so. It doesn’t answer the question of what we do now though.”
“We could try to find The Owner ourselves?” Baz suggests. “I know you’re all worrying about it, and after what you told me about him, he shouldn’t be free.”
“Agreed,” Van says.
“Wait,” I interrupt before anyone can start discussing the plan to go after The Owner.
“As much as I want to go after him, I think Ty has it handled, he said he did, and if he wanted our help, he would have let us know. Plus, I think it would be better if we headed over to Scotland to Griff’s clan lands and picked up the ingredients that Ransom needs for the wards.
We have no idea what finding Pete is going to mean, but from past experiences, I’m going to assume that it’s going to mean that we get really fucking busy. ”
“Oh, for sure,” River replies. He starts shifting in his seat as his smile widens, “I am definitely up for taking a trip to Scotland, plus we don’t even have to fly because we can just use House’s portal!”
“Oh shit, I forgot about that,” Van says. He glances over to Griff, “What do you think? Do you want to head out there?”
Griff nods, “Yeah, I think it’s probably good timing actually. We won’t be able to portal straight onto clan lands. Like I’ve said before, no one will take very kindly to that, and I really don’t want to have to fight my family before they realize who we are.”
“Yeah, let’s avoid that at all costs,” Van agrees with a slight grimace. “I guess that’s settled then. We’re going to Scotland.”
“It would probably be a good idea for everyone to pack for an overnight stay. I don’t know how easy the plant is going to be to gather, and my family would probably like to meet everyone,” Griff suggests.
“I sort of figured that’s what we were doing anyway,” Raiden replies. “We can stay for as long as you want to. We don’t need to get the plant and then immediately leave.”
“Raiden’s right, we’ve waited this long to make the wards, a few more days isn’t going to make any difference,” Ransom agrees.
“Thanks, guys,” Griff says and then adds with a fond smile, “I adore my family, but they are best in small doses, so pack for a couple of days max.”
We all grin.
To be honest, I can’t wait to meet them.
“Alright, that’s settled then, we’ll head out after lunch, but there isn’t really any rush, and it is early,” Van says.
Everyone nods in agreement.
“I’m going to go and get a workout in before we have to go,” Reed says as he stands up.
“I think I’m going to go and have a look in the portal room and make sure that we one hundred percent know how to use it before we just throw ourselves through it,” Raiden suggests thoughtfully.
“Good point, I’ll come with you if that’s okay?” Baz asks.
Raiden nods, “Of course. Come on, I’ll show you around a bit as well.”
I push away from the table, too. “I’m going to go and start packing so I can do it slowly, and methodically, and so I don’t end up forgetting to pack something vital or more likely end up panicking packing random things for a just in case scenario that will probably never happen.”
“Like the stiletto,” River grins, remembering the stiletto that I packed in my bag for the Choosing, just the one stiletto.
To be honest, that still makes sense to me.
A stiletto is a good weapon if you know how to use it, and we didn’t know whether we were going to have to do a challenge that would mean that we couldn’t use actual weapons. I stand by that decision.
“Or the coffee maker,” Coen adds, with a smirk.
The guys all look at him incredulously.
“She packed a coffee maker?” Doc asks, trying to hold back his laughter.
I smirk, “I’m going to leave before this conversation really gets going.”
The guys vaguely wave in my direction as they wait for the coffee maker story from Coen.
The sound of raucous laughter follows me up the stairs, making me smile.
Once I’m back up in my room, I pull out the bag that I packed at the guy's house and haven’t gotten around to emptying yet. A normal person might go through it and put things away neatly before repacking it. I’m not normal.
The Voices mutter in agreement, and I mentally stick my middle finger up at them, making them cackle.
Tipping the bag out on the floor in my closet, I start to rummage through the mess and throw the pieces that I want to take with me back in the bag haphazardly.
It’s a job that doesn’t really require much mental input, and because of that, my mind wanders.
Of course, the place that it wonders to is Dimitri.